SPOTLIGHT: ASSOCIATION Timmins Police Association: Creating Solutions for Recruiting and Retaining Officers

By Heather Hogan

Timmins Police Service rolled out the first plan of its kind in Ontario in March – offering incentives to police officers to join their service.

Set in north-eastern Ontario, Timmins is a typical work-hard, play-hard mining city – a thriving community with a population of 41,145 (Canadian 2021 Census).

Its geographic location poses unique challenges to recruiting and retaining police officers. It is three-and-a-half hours from Sudbury, four hours from North Bay, and eight hours from Toronto. You might say . . . remote.

Luc Lamarche, President of the Timmins Police Association, has 20 years of experience in policing. A member of the Timmins Police Service, he works in the Special Services Unit, which deals with sexual assault and offences against children. He was born and raised in Timmins and still calls it home.

Now in his third term as President, he says the city is difficult to police. Crime in Timmins is rooted in poverty, homelessness, mental health issues, or substance abuse. But over the last year and a half, about 20 police officers have resigned. Many have joined other police services or have left policing altogether and transitioned to different careers. The resignations reflect a province-wide issue of staffing shortages among police services facing higher instances of crime.

Currently, the service has about 80 officers, which includes all people in uniform, from constables to the chief.

Burnout jeopardizes community and police officer safety

“We also struggle like every other police service with having several of our members off on long-term health leave. That is par for the course in policing,” says Luc. “The numbers are really dwindling for how many officers you actually have available to police and patrol our community and keep it safe.”

If increased crime and policing burnout is not bad enough, Timmins’ geographic location further reduces recruitment and retention within the policing service.

Losing so many officers so quickly, you can imagine the stress it puts on the rank and file.

“And it becomes a frus- tration because there’s the burnout, and a continuous demand to come out and work overtime to fill in the holes that we have,” continues Luc. “We struggle to maintain our minimum manpower requirements within the community.”

This is a community safety issue which also becomes an officer safety issue.

A cycle of these issues recently compounded within the Timmins Police Association, causing it to approach its breaking point. Members could no longer bear the heavy and prolonged strain.

“You can’t allow yourself to get to that level because if you’re one call away from not having officers respond to anything going on in the community, that’s unacceptable,” said Luc.

Enough was enough

In December 2022, the Association drafted a letter to the Timmins Police Service Board declaring that starting January 1, 2023, officers would respond to their calls and return to the station. There would be no proactive patrols.

The following day, Luc met with the Timmins Police Association Board Chair, Kraymr Grenke and Police Chief Dan Foy. He told them that his members needed a change.

During that meeting, all sides agreed that they needed to act immediately. But it wasn’t without a brutally honest conversation about the Association’s Member experience.

“I described how our members could see no light at the end of the tunnel,” said Luc.

Then and there, they all committed to working together to find strategies and solutions by February 15th – something the association and its members could support.

“So we left that meeting with a handshake and rescinded our letter,” said Luc.

Working group rolled up its sleeves

Everyone wanted to achieve the same thing: enhancing community safety by recruiting and retaining police officers and improving police presence in Timmins.

Timmins Police Service and Timmins Police Association created a small working group that met every Friday for two months until the initiative launched in March.

Their approach was two-fold: 1) They needed to attract recruits, and 2) retain those recruits and current police officers.

Everyone had a role to play, from brainstorming to understanding the legalities, from presenting the budget to Council to get support, to ensuring Association Members were on board with the plan.

“Because there is no point in recruiting anybody if you can’t keep them,” said Luc. “Once we rolled up our sleeves and decided to work together to try to move things forward, it actually was a very wide and successful process.”

New recruit and experienced officer incentives

Being the first out of the gate was the priority to retain an edge in the recruitment process.

New recruits who join the Timmins Police Service by December 31, 2024, will receive a one-time payment equal to their Ontario Police College (OPC) tuition fees. Fees are around $15,500 for the 12-to-13-week course. The reimbursement will be available to OPC graduates of 2023 or 2024.

As for experienced officers, the Timmins Police Service offered a $30,000 incentive for a first class constable of any recognized police service in Canada to join their service. To quickly attract candidates, the Association gave a short window of opportunity. Applicants had from April 15, 2023, to May 15, 2023, to apply to qualify for the incentive.

The goal was to hire eight experienced officers during that period.

Both new recruit and experienced officer incentives required participating officers to sign a contract promising five years of service with Timmins Police.

New employee referral program

Luc credits the Timmins Police Service Board for adding an employee referral program to the initiative. An employee who brings in an experienced police officer will receive $5,000; recruiting a new police officer will pay $2,500.

“The employee referral program encourages our members to be part of the solution,” said Luc. “That is really bold.”

Delaying retirement could pay off

The Board also presented financial incentives that would motivate upcoming retirees to delay their retirement. This initiative rolled out in March, and since then, Timmins Police Service has received many phone calls and visits from across and outside Ontario.

“I have no doubt we’ll be very successful,” said Luc. “We will have challenges with our community’s high crime rate, geographic location and workload, but there is now a light at the end of the tunnel for our members. Help is coming.”

*Update: The Government of Ontario has since announced that it is making it easier for police services across the province to recruit and train more police officers by removing tuition fees for the Basic Constable Training program at the Ontario Police College (OPC) and immediately expanding the number of recruits that can be trained each year.